


AU: IWTB with William

by DarlaBlack



Series: Scenario: 5 Things [5]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Movie: The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008), Mulder & Scully keep William
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 11:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15580521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlaBlack/pseuds/DarlaBlack
Summary: AU/5 Headcanons in which William is still living with Mulder & Scully during "I Want to Believe"





	AU: IWTB with William

**Author's Note:**

> I prompted this AU/5 Headcanons thing to myself because the idea came to me during my rewatch in July. It’s not kid-fic, despite the concept—I just wanted to think through how their relationship would be different (and their mental states), if they’d been with William instead of obviously mourning him and broken during the second movie. Part of the tumblr challenge, "Give me an AU scenario, and I'll write 5 headcanons for it." Some truly amazing stuff came out of this challenge, most way better than mine.

**1.**  She’s been waiting for this day, knowing it would come, and nervous about what it will mean for them. He’s bearded and unkept at their small dining table, newspapers in a pile, sunflower seeds ascatter, the beginnings of a near-forgotten dinner on the counter by the stove.

“Mulder,” she says from behind him.

“What’s up, doc?” He asks without looking.

Before she can answer, William barrels into the room and crashes into her with a hug, telling her about school and asking about snacks. She makes eye contact with Mulder over the boy’s head, and he reads her trepidation. “What?” He mouths.

She ushers William out of the room with a granola bar and a promise of time together later, then explains her encounter at work: They want him back. They need his help.

Mulder shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says. “I won’t.”

Scully lays her palm on his chest. “Don’t you want to work again? Don’t you feel the need to sometimes?”

“I’m happy, Scully.” He wraps both his hands around hers, lifting it to his lips for a kiss. “I like my life.”

A pained expression crosses her face. She knows how much he loves William, loves being a father. But she also knows who he is at his core: how he thrives with a puzzle to solve, a monster to catch. She wants him safe and sane, but she also wants him happy.

Scully sighs. “Okay,” she says, turning to go. “I’ll tell them your answer.”

But it’s only minutes before he’s hooking his fingers around her elbow and telling her to wait.

 

**2.**  She can’t go with him. Not with no notice on a Tuesday night and a first grader expecting the next chapter of Harry Potter before bedtime; not with a school bus coming in the morning. They are not so free as they once were. She watches him climb into the helicopter, William nearly bursting with excitement beside her in his coat, mittened hands over his ears, gaping and grinning at the loud loud noise and the whirling blades. Before Mulder goes, she tells him to be safe. She tells him to call her. He is anxious at going alone, but also she sees the boyish excitement in his eyes, like his son’s, the gleam of adventure so long eschewed. She frowns at the helicopter that flies away, feels like the forlorn wife left at home to fret over her soldier in battle. This is not who she is either, not really. She was once a soldier too.

Scully feels their two parallel lives pulling at her, pulling her apart: danger and domesticity at odds. She misses the thrill of investigation. Much as she enjoys her healing work, she longs, too, for the mysteries of the dead; she first chose pathology, after all.

Two hours later he calls and gives her the rundown: the arm, the crime scene, the words of a convicted pedophile priest. She’s appalled. She’s intrigued. She asks him to bring her the file.

 

**3.**  “I’m only half the team,” he tells Agent Whitney.

“Yes, but it’s your insights I need here.” She’s giving him a look he doesn’t like. She doesn’t want Scully involved and this makes him suspicious.

“I don’t think you understand. I work because  _we_  work. Together.”

“Then why isn’t she here?”

He glares at her. “Because she’s at home with  _our son_.”

“Your—” and this quiets her; something clicks in her mind, pieces she hadn’t seen, falling into place. “Oh.”

When the second woman goes missing, Scully connects the medical data—the blood type, the tranquilizer, the surgical precision of the severed arm’s cut: organs, body-snatchers, some modern-day resurrectionists, only taking the living not the dead. In bed that night they lie facing each other, whispers over pillows in the darkened room. “The priest is a monster, too,” she says. “He hurt those little boys.” They are both thinking of the little boy down the hall who sleeps soundly with a dinosaur nightlight.

“Yes,” Mulder says. “But there’s something else, too. Some connection.”

“Why should we listen to him? This monster?”

He shakes his head. “Because we might still save her. Save both of them.”

And Scully looks at him with such tenderness. Such love. Even after everything, his drive is the same: listen to those the world has tried to silence; never give up on the lost. She runs her fingers along his jawline. “Scratchy beard,” she says affectionately. He rubs it against her palm, then her cheek, and she squirms and laughs; he rubs it down her neck to her chest and she squirms again, but differently. Her body arches toward his. He finds her mouth with his own, and then in the room there is no sound but quiet moaning, a gasp, until the telephone rings and they are rudely interrupted.

 

**4.**  They find a frozen sea of body parts and the name of the kidnapper, then Mulder finds Scully at work after a very long day. She slumps, exhausted, in the locker room.

“There you are,” he says. “Bad day?”

She nods. “Tired.”

He sits beside her and she leans into him. “We have some leads. We think we found the guy.” He wants her to come with him to hunt down the suspect but she tells him, “Mulder, no.” She doesn’t even have a legal weapon anymore. They are not FBI. They can’t chase monsters with a child at home. But he clenches his jaw, becomes angry and defensive.

“Scully, this is who I am. This is who I’ve always been. I can’t quit now, not when we’re so close to solving this case.”

And she realizes that this is what she’s been so afraid of, for so long. He’ll jump back in so easily: with both feet, without looking, without thinking. “You’re so ready to leave us, then?” She asks and feels her heart squeezing too hard with each beat, feels it in her toes and her temples.

“What?” He is startled, appalled.

“Mulder, I can’t charge after you into the darkness anymore, and I can’t stand to watch you go alone, to put yourself in danger. I don’t ever, ever want to see you… dead…again, at the hands of something evil.”

His mouth hangs open for a moment in his shock. “Scully… we’re just going after a suspect.”

“Yes,” she says. “I know.”

 

**5.**  And she was right. Of course she was right. An agent loses her life, and it takes Skinner, Scully’s mother (watching William), and a hell of a logical leap to save his ass from another lunatic. When she holds him against her, checking his pulse in the snow-cold shed—Jesus, the blood is everywhere, what is this place?—he wants to say, “I had you big time,” but thinks better of it when he sees her eyes. She lets out a choked sob and drops her head to his chest. “Goddamnit, Mulder,” she says.

“You told me so?” He croaks.

And she wants to slap him, but instead sends Skinner to keep him warm while she saves a second life that night.

In the hospital, William checks over all his fathers injuries, a little doctor like his mother, and pronounces none of them “really bad,” just “kinda bad.” Mulder tousles the boy’s hair, and says “C’mere” as he pulls his son into a sloppy hug. Mulder understands, now, the dilemma Scully saw from the beginning. There is too much at stake for active field work, but also too much at stake not to work at all. The next day, Skinner appears on their porch and offers them a solution: consulting work—as a team.

“No field work?” Mulder asks.

“No field work.”

“Okay,” Scully says, and Mulder is surprised at how quickly she agrees.

“On one condition,” Mulder adds, and Scully eyes him quizzically. “We go on vacation first.”

Skinner smirks. “Deal.”


End file.
